Week of April 10, 2017

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: more good things from Milan (including our picks for MVP), artist- and architect-designed carpets, and a chill-out zone for reading and record-listening (so analog!) in the middle of Manhattan.
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Emerging Dutch designers Truly Truly

This Dutch-Based Studio Was the Best Thing We Saw at Salone Satellite

The Dutch-based studio Truly Truly finds a comfortable niche oscillating between product design and experience, creating artful and engaging moments for the viewer that fall between familiarity and curiosity. Their latest work, presented at last week’s Salone Satellite, features projects that combine technical ingenuity with new aesthetics — their morphing Touch glass lights are cast using a dynamic mold that allows for more expressive surface qualities, while the Wove chair plays on the graphic interplay of two differently colored bent-wire frames. And of course we were instantly magnetized by the Daze table – folded, aluminum volumes with subtle corner slits, which allow flashes of hazy, powder-coated color to burst through.
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A Studio Aiming to Bring More Curves and Coziness to Finnish Design

In the U.S., we look at the rich, enduring design history of Scandinavian countries like Finland and feel nothing but blind envy. But those who have grown up amidst it often have a more nuanced view, like Anni Pitkäjärvi and Hanna-Kaarina Heikkilä of the emerging Helsinki outfit Studio Finna: "The Finnish design world is very much masculine," they say. "The key aspect is functionality. The design language is edgy and square. The colors used are black, white, and grey." They're trying to take a different tack.
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ECAL Students, Playing With the Distinction Between Object and Art

An exhibition curated by an artist closely affiliated with the Fluxus movement — John M Armleder, to be exact — is sure to be liberated from traditional constraints. “More Rules for a Modern Life,” a selection of pieces by ECAL students in industrial design and fine arts that debuted last week in Milan, turns out to be just the case.
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Suzanne Antonelli, Print Designer

On her Tumblr, Suzanne Antonelli self-identifies as a printed textile designer. But in truth, the Norwich, UK–based designer's graphics have taken on such a life of their own that Antonelli has begun to be more widely known for the patterns themselves. In her webshop, those patterns are applied to vegetable ink–printed recycled paper notebooks, or, more simply, to giclee A1 posters — the better for adorning the walls of your house, which you're going to want to do in spades after perusing these images. Of her interest in print-making — and particularly of the repetitive geometries that have become her signature — Antonelli has said: "I first became interested in pattern when I was doing my foundation in Brighton. There was hardly any room in the studio and desks were on a first come first serve basis; I think that the lack of space made me focus more and I produced a lot of really small detailed work on graph paper using tiny dots to make up different blocks of pattern."
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De Allegri and Fogale

A Mystical Marble Interior in the Heart of Milan

The last time we saw a site-specific installation by London-based duo De Allegri and Fogale, you literally couldn't miss it — their tinted acrylic tunnel stretched across a bridge at the V&A, smack in the middle of the London Design Festival. But last week, the duo launched a project in Milan so small and so hidden that you had to know exactly what you were looking for in order to find it. But perhaps that was the point: Called Mystical Solace, the installation was meant as a commentary on the quiet, contemplative spaces that have become so popular during events like these.
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The Best of the 2017 Milan Furniture Fair, Part I

When you're on the ground at the Milan Furniture Fair, things can seem like a total blur — you're walking miles a day, eating on the go, drinking too much wine, and seeing more new things than your brain can actually process at once. Which is why we love doing round-ups like these — organizing all of our favorite things into one (or two or three) places makes us realize just how great last week was, what trends are emerging (we're looking at you fringe, rust, lilac, and fiberglass) and what an interesting place design is at right now.
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Week of April 3, 2017

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: the fat-legged table trend continues, a design restaurant grows in Nashville, and imaginary modernist villas take shape in Vienna.
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The Best Thing We Saw in Milan Today, Day 4

On the Salone fairgrounds, we found a sleeper hit in the Italian metal processing company De Castelli, who began collaborating with designers back in 2010. We especially love the snaking, patinated Scribble tables by Francesca Lanzavecchia above, as well as the painterly folding screens by Alessandra Baldereschi.
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New Apparatus collection

The Best Thing We Saw in Milan Today, Day 3

We don't mean to be biased towards our American compatriots for the third day in a row, but the new Apparatus collection is, in a word, stunning — translucent, cast-resin tables topped by ash slabs lacquered in a high-gloss, rust-colored hue; patinated brass lamps with bases sheathed in a buttery calf suede; and slip-cast porcelain pendants punctuated by dangling brass spheres.
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The Best Thing We Saw in Milan Today, Day 2

At Rossana Orlandi, we spied this collection of items by students in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago's Architecture, Interior Architecture, and Designed Objects program. The school partnered with West Supply, a Chicago-based foundry and fabricator to develop a selection of objects in glass and bronze.
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